They Are Night Zombies
by BatmansBabe
Summary: This is a x-over crackfic. About the zombie apocalypse. "Zombies. She should have known it would be zombies that brought the world crashing to it's knees." Rookie Blue, Buffy/Angel, Veronica Mars, Castle, The Walking Dead, Vampire Diaries, Firefly
1. 1 They Are Night Zombies!

**Disclaimer:** Nothing belongs to me.

Andy's breath came out in bright angry patches of steam, her heavy gasps echoing down the dark hallway in front of her.

A voice crackled to life in her ear, startling her, but she kept running, hoping desperately that she was getting some distance on her pursuants. "McNally, where the hell are you? You were supposed to be out twenty minutes ago."

She pressed a finger to her earpiece, trying to stifle the pants as she responded. "Yeah, I hit a snag. Be out in a minute."

"As in sixty seconds?"

"As in _shut up_ _turn the car on now,_I can't talk and run."

"Sounds like a personal problem to me."

"Just be ready to drive, _sir."_

She skidded around a corner and shoved open the door in front of her, narrowly avoiding it as it quickly swung back to close.

It was just as dark outside as it had been in the hospital, but thankfully her eyes were already well adjusted and it only took her a moment to spot the dark van parked on the other side of the street. She took off at top speed, hiking her pack further up on her shoulder, and didn't dare look back as she heard the door bang into the brick wall just behind her.

"Open the door NOW!" Andy muttered as she pressed hard on the earpiece.

Ten feet away from the van, the side door started to slide open, and Andy took two more long steps before practically leaping into the thing. As she tumbled forward, the door swung shut and without bothering to turn on headlights the driver took off up the street.

The passenger turned, and Andy glared at his little grin. "You get the stuff?"

"Uh, yeah. Got it." She slid her bag off her shoulder. "Would have gotten a_lot more_ if our resident scout could actually do his job." Sullenly, she slid across the floor of the van, pressing her back against the far wall, and beside her, the woman who'd opened the door for her glanced up through bright red hair, face illuminated by computer light. "Maybe he's having an off day."

"Yeah, maybe he wants my fist in his face."

Shaw chuckled fromt he drivers seat. "Aw, c'mon McNally, don't tell me you didn't enjoy your little solo mission. You and Swarek can compare cool points when we get back."

"That's if Swarek doesn't try to kill the, uh, scout for sending his girl into the shitstorm." Andy rolled her eyes at Esposito as Oliver made a face in the rearview mirror.

"You'd think one of these days Sammy would stop being so dramatic about seeing you in life or death situations. You manage to stumble onto them at least once a week. And that was before..."

Taking a deep breath, Andy leaned her head back against the window. "Just shut up and drive." Ignoring the look Oliver shot her in the mirror, she closed her eyes, cradling her backpack close as she tried to calm her still furiously beating heart.

She woke with a start, eyes taking a moment to adjust to the light flooding in through the side door, and watched as Willow gathered up all her supplies. Hugging her bag to her, Andy took a moments deep breath before pushing past the redhead and out into the warehouse that was their current home. She made a beeline towards the little medical area they'd sectioned off, ignoring Shaw as he called out to her, probably to stop her from finding the man she was currently intent on at least sucker punching. She knew he wouldn't follow her. The first thing he did after every single mission was find Zoe and get ridiculously lovey with her while she lectured him on his duty to his wife and his children.

She brushed aside a curtain and nodded at Dov, who was nursing a nasty looking cut on one arm. He seemed in one piece though,  
>She ducked under some low hanging equipment and swung around the corner only to come face to face with just the man she'd been looking for - smug tilt to his mouth, brown hair hanging in one dark eye, perfect jawline practically gleaming in the harsh light.<p>

Her fist connected with a noise loud enough to echo across a corridor of empty shelves.

"Jesus! What was that for?"

Andy didn't blink as she swung at him again, but she'd gotten her moment of surprise, and he caught the fist just in front of his now bleeding nose. Andy kind of hoped she'd broken it - not that it would matter. It would heal perfectly.

"_Abandoned?_" Andy could feel herself shaking in anger now, and didn't bother to try for quiet. It wasn't like many people actually really slept peacefully, anymore, and Damon Salvatore was a nuisance who needed to be yelled at, every once in a while. "_There was a nest, you jackass!_"

"Hey! I scoped that whole place out, there was _no one _there. Maybe they followed you."

"Followed - a bunch of dead heads _followed _me to the hospital? Are you kidding me? They had the place staked out! They knew the building! I thought your supernatural senses were supposed to be a _help?_"

Andy shoved him, hard, and although he barely moved, he seemed to feel the pressure all the same. "If you're done throwing your little tantrum - ."

"My little tantrum? Do you know what kind of supplies were in that place? Do you have any idea - if we'd done a daylight raid like I wanted we would have been able to stock up the medical inventory for a year. But you convinced everyone that it was safe. Because you told us _there was nothing _in the building!"

"But you got what you went in there for?" His voice was quiet, dark and hard and worried. She took him in, dark circles under his eyes, pale (paler) face, slumped shoulders and wrinkled shirt, and almost, _almost _felt a bit of pity for him. Elena had been sick for five days now, and if they didn't find a way to kick the fever in the next 24 hours she was going to start the transition process. And Andy had no doubt Damon would put her down. And then throw out his ring and walk into the sun.

"Yeah, I got it. And almost got a bite in the process."

"But you didn't get a bite, so you can hand over the meds and go regale the fawning masses with your tale of heroics." His self assured way of brushing people off had always annoyed her, but the _gall _he had throwing sarcasm around right now was enough to make her contemplate how she could get another punch in.

She bit the inside of her cheek, hard, and shoved past him into the main room. Coming to a stop in front of the inventory shelf, she swung her bag up and onto the small table where their meager antibiotics were being stored. She dumped the whole bag out, and, completely ignoring their resident doctor Simon's cry of protest, stormed out past Damon in a huff.

She navigated her way through the maze of makeshift tents and shacks, past a group of teenagers they'd picked up on their way through Virginia a few months ago, past a couple who'd been the only two survivors of a late night attack on a neighborhood in Georgia, past people she didn't know and people she didn't care about.

She finally got close to the back of the warehouse, and gave a sigh of relief at the sight of her friends. The few she had left in this world.

Sam jumped up when he saw her, moving swiftly around the group of chatty rookies who seemed to think gossiping about relationships was the most important thing to do in the middle of an apocalypse, and when he was close enough his hands immediately went out to her face, checking for cuts and bruises she knew weren't there. When he was satisfied, he pressed his forehead against hers, their breath mingling as he let out a long sigh. "You were supposed to be back half an hour ago, sweetheart."

Andy nodded. "Yeah. The place wasn't quite as empty as we thought."

His brow furrowed. "You're okay though?" Hands that had been fine with just checking her face now began a quick rundown of her whole body, and she winced when he squeezed the fingers of her right hand. "What's that about?"

"It's nothing, really."

"_Andy._You should have Simon check it."

"It's not serious. I didn't even hurt my hand until I got back."

He shot her an incredulous look. "Tell me you didn't fall out of the van or something."

Andy glared, trying not to take offense at the fact that she really was considered that much of a klutz. "Jeez, no. I...uh...IpunchedDamonintheface."

"You who'd the what?" God, he was spending WAY too much time with Dov.

Rolling her eyes at him, she stretched her fingers and shrugged her shoulder. "I punched Damon. In the face."

She watched his head bob up and down as he nodded, and she could practically feel the grin he was trying hard to fight.

"Shut up."

He let out a little snort, finally managing to gain control over his face, and he gave her a very serious look that crumbled into chuckles a moment later. He gathered her close, pressing his chin into her hair while his body shook with laughter, and Andy grudgingly smiled against the lapel of his shirt. She'd been threatening to punch Damon since they'd run into him in North Carolina six months ago, and Sam had probably heard those threats more than anyone. "You actually got a hit in? With his reflexes?"

Andy nodded against his neck, no longer that upset about the laughing and starting to feel the exhaustion of the night seep into her bones. "It was a surprise attack."

Sam pulled back, wrapping an arm around her back. "Lets get you to bed, killer."

Andy sighed, letting her head rest against his shoulder, and tried to ignore the stares she could feel coming from the rookies. She nodded to Gail as Sam lead her toward their little tent in the far corner of the warehouse. "I've got a meeting in twenty with a couple of the commandos," he told her as they reached the tent. "Something about a relocation."

Andy frowned. "We haven't even finished scoping this place out."

"There's been some intel on the witchy side of things," he told her, one hand waggling fingers in her face in his usual gesture that indicated he was talking about magic, the other drifting down her arm to cradle her elbow. "Guess we're following behind some pretty heavily armed fighters. Willow wants to catch up with them."

"She didn't say anything earlier."

Sam nodded. "She rarely does. But if you wake up and I'm still not around, I want you to assume that Salvatore has drained me of all my blood and go after him with your iron fists."

Andy wrinkled her nose at him. "Ha. Ha."

He smiled down at her, all warm and soft, and Andy felt her heart contract, like it always did when he looked at her like that. Like she was precious, and important. Like she was the world.

"Get some sleep. Peck and I are both going to the meeting, so when you wake up we're gonna have to make some decisions."

Andy nodded. She knew Sam hated being around so many people, knew he'd rather be out on their own with as few people as possible, but she also knew that without someone like Willow they would be running in the dark, unaware of the dangers ahead, unaware of how far they had left to go to reach someplace safe.

She wondered when this had become her life. Living day to day, always worried about infection, or contamination, always on the move, always hyper-aware of the danger looming around every corner. When her world had become a supernatural one.

"Yeah. Go have fun at your Zombie Apocalypse meeting."

He made a face at her and leaned in to kiss her. "I love you," he told her, softly, dropping his hand from her arm reluctantly.

"I know you do," she told him on a smile, watching him until he'd disappeared into the tent city of the warehouse.


	2. 2 Fresh Blood

**Disclaimer:** Nothing belongs to me.

Willow could remember a time when "apocalypse" was just another monster to be defeated - when a little brawn, a little brains, and some hocus pocus saved the world every May like clockwork.

Things had _made sense._

Now her days were spent planning raids on abandoned buildings and sending out protection charms, always searching for _some _sort of safe haven.

Zombies.

She should have known it would be zombies that brought the world crashing to it's knees.

It had been a Wednesday in June, the first time she'd heard of an outbreak - the last Wednesday in June, to be exact - and byt the first Thursday in July the whole world had fallen into chaos. There had been no Scoobie meeting, no "It must be Tuesday" (it wasn't), no quick scrambling to research the Big Bad and pull together with a rousing (and overly long) speech from Buffy. They just...fell to pieces.

All lines of commincation had been cut off, all modes of public transportation brought to a standstill. For a few weeks most governments had managed to keep borders closed - but most had quickly become dead heads themselves.

People had looted the streets, flooded the hospitals, killed each other in panic and succumbed to an illness that attacked from all angles. It was rumored, these days, that scientists had discovered a vaccine to innoculate the virus, and for all Willow knew some of the people in this warehouse had recieved it, but most of the survivors of the initial chaos seemed to have a natural immunity to the strain unless they were physically bitten.

Vampires, of course, were immune to it.

Willow imagined that, in the total madness of the first six months, the undead had become the majority in the population. Between zombies and vampires, living, breathing humans seemed to be jumping towards extinction.

Finding somewhere safe and secure was the only option left to them, or they, too, would fall either to a vicious death or a terrible transformation into brainless killing machines stuffed into human skin.

Willow glanced up from her computer as Sam Finn entered the makeshift command room - an area of the warehouse which had probably once been a breakroom, but now had been set up like some sort of deep underground military command station. She greeted the woman wth a soft hello before turning back to her computer screen.

Sam Finn was quite literally the only person WIllow had known before the outbreak that she could say with certainty was still alive. She'd been in Louisiana at the first sign of the disease, investigating what turned out to be a rather large coven secret - complete with it's own vampires, witches, and werewolves (and a _hybrid_ monster she had never really wrapped her mind around, what with the zombie apocalypse).

Willow didn't realy know how she felt about Sam. Other than a smidgeon of gratitude she'd had for a familiar face in those first few, horrible weeks, Willow always kind of disliked her. And worse - she was almost positive Sam knew something about the origin of the virus. Something she was keeping to herself.

Others filed in after her - two of the cops from Toronto who'd saved WIllow's life, the Salvatore she'd saved in Mystic Falls, a retired colonel from Wisconsin and another cop, this one from a group they'd met up with near Atlanta just a few days after she'd taken Salvatore's group under her wing.

Willow finally set her computer aside, watching as everyone pulled up chairs and settled themselves.

Then she dropped the bomb she knew might split their group in half. "We need to get out of the city within the week."

"Are you insane?"

Gail could feel all eyes swing to her, and felt herself sit up straighter in her chair in response. Nothing like a zombie apocalypse to get over her fear of public speaking.

"No, seriously. Do you have any idea how _ridiculous _that is as a plan? Just, in general?"

"Why is it such a bad idea?" This from quaint little small-town Georgia sheriff Grimes. Gail felt her lip curling in response.

"The short list? Okay, number one - that leaves us out in the open for three days. If we cut across the city the way Willow wants us to, we'll be without cover for _three days._ Number two, we have no guarantee that the highway is going to have a single running car, let alone room to navigate a working one. Number three, at least half of the people here are civilians."

"They've stayed alive this long."

Gail snorted. "In small groups with at least five or six people who can handle a weapon. This big a group, what, you think we can all just herd them into the middle and patrol the outer edge and everyone will survive an incursion? There are people in this place who have never seen a gun in their life. Come on, you guys aren't actually seriously considering this?"

"I can put a protection spell on us all." Willow said.

"Yeah, and I can use a six shooter to save all hundred and seventy people you want to herd into Zombieland Central Station."

"They're not zombies."

Gail swung her gaze to the woman just down the table from her. She was a military woman all the way - dark hair pulled back from her face, hard eyes and hard muscles and hardass attitude. Gail hated her guts. "They die and come back to life wanting nothing more than to eat living flesh, and when they bite you you die and become one of them. They're zombies. Get over it and lets get back to how psychotic it is to even contemplate leaving without knowing exactly how long we're going to be without a real structured facility to hide our civilians."

"We've done raids on every building in the area - if we don't move out of here soon, we'll just deplete our supply and have to leave in a rush. Which will get more people killed," Sam shot back.

"So either way, people are going to die," came Damon's abrubt entrance into the conversation. He raised his hands, palms up, in a kind of shrugging acceptance. "Let's get this show on the road then."

Gail threw him an annoyed look. "You know, the more people who die, the closer you get to losing your main source of food."

"I'm a tame vamp now, honey buns. I don't eat people. Also, the gross factor of having something in common with dead heads kind of makes it hard for me to even contemplate it."

Wrinkling her nose at Damon, she turned back to WIllow. "Okay. Say I'm suddenly down with the inevitable death of ten or twenty people on our way to this...new place. What does the new place have? What supplies will we have to leave behind and pick up again? And can we use Daryl for bait to keep the dead heads from following us?"

Daryl glanced up from his new art project, which was apparently carving a heavily breasted chick into the wooden table with his hunting knife. "Hey, blondie, I have no problem hitting a woman."

"Good, cause I have no problems taking one down." Shooting him a dry smile, she turned to Willow.

"The new place is an abandoned town just outside of D.C."

"How do you know it's abandoned?"

"I spoke to a member of a coven who just left there. It was quarantined at the first outbreak and everyone was shipped out. The original quarantine blockade is still in place. The creatures haven't bothered with it because the fences around the place are still electrified. And before you ask, I can get us in. As far as supplies, the only things we'd have to find when we got there would be water and food. Anything else we can't carry we can take with Simon and Elena in the medical van or in one of the other trucks."

"What about the bait thing?"

Willow ignored her, and she gave a little chuckle as Daryl shot her a middle finger, not looking up from his naked masterpiece. Beside her, Swarek stirred in his chair. It was the first movement he'd made since he sat down.

"Is there any shelter outside of the city?" he asked, looking every bit the cop in parade asking Sarg a question. "Any place to make camps - any big hills with a view, any buildings we can clear for a night? We're safe for about 9 hours out of a day, but walking through unknown land in the dark is a suicide mission."

"If we take two hours out of every day for finding shelter, we can be there on the third day. There should be about four hours left once we get there to hunt outside the fence boundary and find a water source, if there isn't one actually in the quarantine area."

"When do you want to leave?"

"Tomorrow morning."

Gail laughed. "Wait, what? Tomorrow morning? How long have you been planning this?"

"Two weeks." WIllow told her.

"Jesus. Way to give us the heads up."

"I didn't get ahold of Grace until yesterday. I needed to be sure we were going somewhere safe."

Grimes leaned forward in his seat. "So we tell everyone tomorrow. We give them the day to ready and then we go."

Everyone was quiet as they glanced at each other for confirmation of the plan.

Gail sighed even as she nodded her head. "I still think we're all gonna die."

Damon smirked at her across the table. "See you in hell, _blondie._"

_**Somewhere in L.A.**_

Giles watched to two blondes continue to bicker as they pushed through the doorway, and caught the tail end of something along the lines of "kickass blonde chicks do not _always _have a thing for the bad boy," as they came to a stop in front of him. He watched as Buffy and Veronica both turned toward him, and bit back the sarcastic comment on the tip of his tongue about how ridiculous it was to have the two of them in the same _city, _let alone the same place at the same time.

"Giles, we found Willow."

His eyes widened in surprise, his hands immediately reaching for his glasses. "Where?"

"She's in Virginia. North of Richmond. She's headed to one of the abandoned quarantine areas."

"How -."

"We got ahold of her old coven buddy, Grace," Veronica told him. "Also, we're awesome."

He shook his head, pressing his forefinger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. "Well. It seems we need to find a way to get to Virginia."

g him until he'd disappeared into the tent city of the warehouse.


End file.
